A Fun Approach to Book Videos by Patricia Beal

As a debut author and video-phobic, I did a lot of reading before producing my book trailer.

I ended up using a variety of ideas to come up with something that was simple to make and that conveyed the idea of the novel.

Maybe a book trailer is something you’ve always wanted to make but was too intimidated to try. I want to share my approach with you. It might be helpful or spark an even better idea. Here goes.

I used Animoto.com because I like their music selection and because you can remove their logo if you subscribe. I’d also seen some of their videos in publishers’ pages. If you have iMovie I guess you have more options, but I don’t.

For the content of the video, instead of trying to talk about the story as a whole, I tried to isolate a central theme that represents a universal struggle.

Why? Because in most advice blog posts I read, people urged writers to make the video about the reader, and a good way to do that is to offer a solution to their problems.

The best part? By using that approach, you don’t really have to say, “buy my book” because chances are you planted that desire in the reader’s heart with your theme/need approach.

Here’s the video I came up with. I used the word “produced” earlier, but I had to laugh. I don’t think I know enough about videos to “produce” anything.

What do you think? Do you think this works? Feel free to ask me anything you want. There’s no question too silly. This is me you’re talking to… video-challenged.

How challenged? The little video clip at the beginning was shot with my phone, shared on Facebook, saved to my computer, and then uploaded to Animoto. That’s’ how clueless I am with all this. Ask away…

Love y’all!

If you've created book trailers, have you tried this approach? If you're a reader, what type of content in a book trailer appeals to you?

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Patricia Beal is from Brazil and fell in love with the English language while washing dishes at a McDonald's in Indianapolis. She put herself through college working at a BP gas station and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati with a B.A. in English Literature. She’s a 2015 Genesis semi-finalist and First Impressions finalist. A Season to Dance is her debut novel (May 2017).